Publikationen/Publications of the Academic Board

Flip of a Switch: Designing a Kinetic Dialogue System for Switch Interfaces

Maximilian Kullmann, Jan Ehlers, Eva Hornecker, Lewis L. Chuang
2026
Springer
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-03488-5_27

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The proliferation of smart technology in everyday objects provide an opportunity for human–machine collaborations, signaling a shift from typical principal-agent relationships. The current work proposes roboticizing familiar user interfaces to allow objects to communicate with their users without the need of an additional communication modality. We implemented a light switch that is capable of kinetic gestures and report an exploratory study that investigated how naïve users (n = 15) would respond to and interact with different gesture designs. A qualitative analysis of recorded interactions and semi-structured interviews reveal that users are surprised by unfamiliar automation and kinetic gestures serve as cues to promote discovery of the system’s mechanisms and mitigate assumed helplessness.